Eight days have passed since Christmas. All the commotion of New Year's Day has banished the silence of the holy night. In turbulent times, it is a help to find space for being reflective. Today's Gospel reading invites us to do just that.  

Once again we see the shepherds, who came from the open field near Bethlehem and found that what the angel, God's messenger, had said was confirmed. They recounted it, and other people repeated the tale. For a little while, it was the big news in the neighborhood: this newborn child is something special. People are promising a great future for him. He is supposed to set his people free, as the great King David did centuries ago. Thus people are talking about him and puzzling over it all, and hopes arise - but probably doubts as well: How is this child of poor parents supposed to become a savior for the whole people?  

While people are talking, and then probably soon moving on to the next subject of local news, Mary takes a different attitude. Is it not the case with most people, that they take to heart everything to do with their child, that they keep it in their heart and ponder it? A mother misses nothing, none of her child's smiles, not a word that is said about him. And her heart is moved by many impressions, hopes, and fears: What is going to become of my child?  

Mary did not just have vague impressions to go on. She had not been given her child by Joseph. God had made her a gift of the child, after she had given the angel her assent to God's plan. Other people might doubt whether it was so, might cast suspicion on her, might say she had "slipped up". She knew whence this child that she had received had come. She kept in her memory every word the angel had said to her about her child's future. Why should I not believe her? Joseph, her fiancé, believed her.  

It does me good to gaze on Mary at the beginning of a new year and to see how she deals with her personal story. Her attitude would do us good: keeping quiet and pondering how God is doing things in my life; looking at wherever he gives me a sign that he is laying down the central theme of my life's path. I think we will be astonished to see, once we are "on the other side", how everything works together and has its significance.  

Today, eight days after Christmas, there is a twofold rite in accordance with Jewish custom: name giving and circumcision. Thus Jesus is identified as a Jew. Circumcision is the external sign of belonging to the people with whom God made his covenant. You cannot separate Jesus from his people, even though he is the subject of controversy among Jews to this day.  

His name, too, shows unambiguously that he is a Jew: "Yeshua", or "Jesus", was a common name in those days. It expresses a great hope, for it means "God saves". And that is how the angel explains to Joseph the name that he is to give the child whom Mary has conceived: "He will save his people from their sins" [Matthew 1:21]. We Christians believe that this name has another, deeper meaning: "Jesus" means not only that God is the Savior but that Jesus himself is the God who saves, who became a human child in order to make us children of God. At the beginning of the year, we find two names that can be our guide through all the days to come: Jesus and Mary.  

Reprinted from:
Jesus, The Divine Physician
Encountering Christ in the Gospel of Luke
By Christoph Cardinal Schönborn,
Archbishop of Vienna, Austria
Ignatius Press, 2008
www.ignatius.com